Norman Fischer

Norman Fischer is a poet and Zen Buddhist priest who lives in Muir Beach, California. His latest collection of poetry is Questions/Places/Voices/Seasons (Singing Horse, 2009), with Conflict forthcoming from Chax Press. His latest prose work is Sailing Home (Simon and Schuster, 2008). You can listen to a variety of recordings spanning several decades on Fischer’s PennSound author page.

Recently in Jacket2

Tstsi Jaji

Here I attempt to transcribe my initial impressions after listening once to the full album of Cecil Taylor’s recorded poem, Chinampas,and repeatedly (for perhaps 9 or 10 hearings) to the penultimate track, #6.56. I was drawn to the editors’ invitation to show the “under the hood” work that precedes a smoothly running piece of writing, their interest in how we deal with poems that exist only as sound texts, and their curiosity about what a first reading/hearing looks like.

Kenneth Sherwood

As readers, writers, students, teachers, or scholars of poetry, many of us have 'first-encounter' stories — hearing Poet X read for the first time; copying neglected Caedmon LPs in the library basement; borrowing a thrice-dubbed cassette of the Black Box Magazine or New Wilderness Audiographics; exploring the personal collection of a generous friend, poet, or teacher. In the days before the web, one might infer the performativity of David Antin, Jerry Rothenberg, Charles Olson, Anne Waldman, or Amiri Baraka through books like Technicians of the Sacred or Open Poetry or envision the scene of a raucous Beat coffeehouse reading, poet jamming with a jazz quintet — but recordings could be scarce.